Vatican’s American spokesman dies

Vatican City: Cardinal John Foley, who served as the Vatican’s communications chief for over two decades, died early Sunday in Pennsylvania. He was 76. The Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced his death, without indicating the cause. But Foley was suffering from leukemia.

Foley provided commentary for American television viewers of the Vatican’s Christmas Midnight Mass for 25 years. His last appearance on NBC television’s national broadcast of the Mass was in December 2009.

In 1984, the late pope John Paul II named Foley an archbishop and appointed him chief of the Vatican’s news operations as president of the Pontifical Commission for Social Communications. Foley served in the post until 2007.

“Everyone who had ever met Cardinal Foley admired and loved him for his kindness and for his spirituality,” Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi told Vatican Radio.

In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI named Foley the grand master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, which provides spiritual and financial support to the Catholic Church in and around Jerusalem and helps maintain Christian shrines in the region.

Foley was then promoted to cardinal later that year.

“Cardinal Foley was a man of great apostolic energy. Anyone who met him was immediately aware of his intense love for the Church and his zeal for communicating the gospel,” Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput said in a statement.

“His charisma and gentle spirit will be sorely missed throughout the universal church.”

Foley died at Villa St. Joseph in Darby, according to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. It said funeral arrangements were pending.

He was born on November 11, 1935 in the same town. He attended Saint Joseph’s University and entered Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary in 1957, where he was ordained a priest. He later earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

During his time in Rome, he served as the assistant editor and Vatican correspondent for the Philadelphia archdiocesan newspaper, The Catholic Standard and Times, becoming its editor in chief from 1970 to 1984.

Upon returning to Philadelphia in 1966, Foley was appointed assistant pastor of St. John the Evangelist parish and served on the faculty at Cardinal Dougherty High School from 1967 to 1984.

Monday, AFP